434 J.-A. PEMBERTON
some measure the Hitler phenomenon. Keyserling stated during the con-
versation that the earthly forces of which he spoke put an accent on ‘soil,
blood, race’ and that these forces had placed themselves in the service
of Hitlerism. He insisted that the earthly forces would in the end prove
‘irresistible’ and that the spiritual forces in contention with them would
be crushed. All that could be done, Keyserling declared, was ‘to make the
best of this terrible prospect.’^23
Huizinga, like the others participating in the conversation, recoiled
from Keyserling’s dark prophecy and in rejecting it, he affirmed a
humanistic philosophy;
Today’s Europe finds itself exposed to a force which threatens a return to
barbarism. The organisation of groups, organisation, in principle, always
hostile to a general sentiment founded on intellectual values and which
tends to link together what differs, presents itself under a new and fright-
ening light. Technical progress has permitted a rapidity and solidity of
the organisation of the masses from which profits madness and crime as
well as or better than wisdom and law. I want to say that all organisation
bears in itself a negative element of rigidity, of a reduction of the life of free
thought, which renders its dangerous by itself. A disturbing weakening of
ethical principles in the life of nations as in that of individuals is ceaselessly
making its way. It is...political power, the purity of race which have taken
the place of the generous aspirations for liberty and truth of other times.
Realism, people will say, in place of illusions and fictions. The fact remains
that these old concepts have a manifest and general ethical value.^24This statement was reproduced in the homage to Huizinga appearing
in the October–November 1945 special issue of the IIIC’s bulletin and
this was because the editor felt that the humanist ideal to which it gave
expression spoke to the needs of the hour.^25 This last point should be
considered against the background of an editorial which Mayoux penned
and published in the same special issue. The editorial was an eloquent
(^23) Bonnet, Intellectual Co-operation in World Organization, 13, and Bonnet, ‘La Société
des Nations et la Coopération Intellectuelle,’ 204. See also Société des Nations, Institut
International de la Coopération Intellectuelle, L’avenir de l’esprit européen, Entretiens 3
(Paris: Société des Nations, Institut International de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 1934), 21.
(^24) Coopération Intellectuelle Internationale [e] (octobre–novembre 1945): 11–2, and
Société des Nations, Institut International de la Coopération Intellectuelle, L’avenir de l’es-
prit européen, 63–4.
(^25) Coopération Intellectuelle Internationale [e] (octobre–novembre 1945), 12.